This book uses the modern theory of artificial intelligence (AI) to
understand human suffering or mental pain. Both humans and sophisticated AI
agents process information about the world in order to achieve goals and obtain
rewards, which is why AI can be used as a model of the human brain and mind.
This book intends to make the theory accessible to a relatively general
audience, requiring only some relevant scientific background. The book starts
with the assumption that suffering is mainly caused by frustration. Frustration
means the failure of an agent (whether AI or human) to achieve a goal or a
reward it wanted or expected. Frustration is inevitable because of the
overwhelming complexity of the world, limited computational resources, and
scarcity of good data. In particular, such limitations imply that an agent
acting in the real world must cope with uncontrollability, unpredictability,
and uncertainty, which all lead to frustration. Fundamental in such modelling
is the idea of learning, or adaptation to the environment. While AI uses
machine learning, humans and animals adapt by a combination of evolutionary
mechanisms and ordinary learning. Even frustration is fundamentally an error
signal that the system uses for learning. This book explores various aspects
and limitations of learning algorithms and their implications regarding
suffering. At the end of the book, the computational theory is used to derive
various interventions or training methods that will reduce suffering in humans.
The amount of frustration is expressed by a simple equation which indicates how
it can be reduced. The ensuing interventions are very similar to those proposed
by Buddhist and Stoic philosophy, and include mindfulness meditation.
Therefore, this book can be interpreted as an exposition of a computational
theory justifying why such philosophies and meditation reduce human suffering.

通过 AI 的现代理论，了解与心理疼痛相关的人类苦难。在理解人类大脑与思维的模型方面，人工智能可以作为一个模型。在这本书中，探讨了学习算法的各个方面和限制以及它们对痛苦的影响，并以计算理论为基础，提供了降低人类痛苦的各种干预措施或培训方法。

痛苦的智能：人工智能能告诉我们关于人类苦难的事情

Painful intelligence: What AI can tell us about human suffering

Consciousness will be introduced axiomatically, inspired by Buddhist insight
meditation and psychology, logic in computer science, and cognitive
neuroscience, as consisting of a stream of $configurations$ that is $compound$,
$discrete$, and (non-deterministically) $computable$. Within this context the
notions of self, concentration, mindfulness, and various forms of suffering can
be defined. As an application of this set up, it will be shown how a combined
development of concentration and mindfulness can attenuate and eventually
eradicate some of the forms of suffering.

介绍由佛教洞察禅修、计算机科学逻辑和认知神经科学启发的意识，由复合、离散且（非确定性地）可计算的一系列构型组成，从而定义了自我、集中力、正念和各种形式的痛苦，进而阐述结合集中力和正念的技能在减轻和最终消除某些形式的苦难方面的应用。